


Gray-123

by unomega



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 20:40:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1578863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unomega/pseuds/unomega
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU Where everything is black and white until you meet your soul mate. Additionally, when your soul mate dies, everything goes back to black and white. Also, imagine having a normal day at work or running errands, but then everything suddenly goes black and white.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gray-123

Her mother had married someone and her vision had stayed standard; nothing exemplary or extraordinary. Her grandmother had married someone and could see color upon color for miles and miles. She said the reason her vision was so remarkable is “because of grandpa.” Ariadne hadn’t thought of that in years and years; until she met Dominic Cobb. 

 

 

The color-vision myth had been quieted over generations and generations. People all of a sudden just stopped telling ther people if their vision changed. No one mentioned if theirs had changed and no one asked anyone else if the change had happened to them. Oh, the change was noticeable, but not so remarkable that you could tell on any given stranger. No, the change was in Becky from first year high school in Synecdoche, NY who read aloud an essay and used color description in her first body paragraph. The change was in Pierre from the office of the Department of Environmental Science at UC Berkeley who made a color board for his thesis project and didn’t realize he’d spent seven minutes going over the color detailing on his design until he saw the aghast looks on the faces of every member of his defense panel.  
  
The change was so polarizing no one wanted to talk about it. With the gloriousness of finding your color-vision came the fear that one day the color would go away. So no one talked about it and no one asked about it. The fear of “what if” quelled anyone’s curiosity until it became taboo; until it became uncouth to ask. 

 

 

The hounds tooth patterning on Cobb’s coat was a gray-89 and his pants were gray-182. Ariadne didn’t note anything remarkable about the color combination except to note that it was remarkably similar to the gray combination of Miles’ outfit. Typically, Miles wore grays 100-200. The heavier grays alluded to his dour mood. In the off chance he wore grays 0-99, every fourth-year architecture senior could predict class would get out on time because Miles was in a good mood. Cobb’s and Miles’ pants were both around gray-182. Their coats were gray-124. Ariadne guessed Cobb must be Miles’ son.  
  
The project proposal sounded promising. She was excited. Graduation was in two weeks and the opportunity to be offered a job before the actual ceremony took place was every student’s dream.  
  
It was exactly that; a dream.

 

 

When she’d gone to the warehouse with Cobb and Miles, there were three men standing in the center of the space. One was the real estate agent. One was a maintenance worker. One was Arthur, Cobb’s business partner. He had beautiful brown eyes.

 

 

She agreed to the testing because she was so disoriented. She met the three men exactly at the same time, so who was it? None of them gave her any indication that he had gone through the momentous change at the same moment. While Cobb and Arthur were setting up the equipment, the agent and the worker bid them good day and left. Miles noted how ashen Ariadne’s face was. Her cheeks were pinked and her pupils were dilated. She shrugged him off when he asked. 

 

 

She knew it was Arthur the next day. When she came back to the warehouse, she had expected Cobb. Cobb was off gathering the rest of the team. Arthur looked more relaxed then than he had the day before, whether it was from the lack of Cobb’s presence or the fact that Ariadne looked gorgeous in that red coat, remained unknown to Ariadne. 

 

 

They went about things quietly and tentatively. Eames never remarked that either Arthur or Ariadne found each other any bit interesting besides a passing glance. He moved on from analyzing them. 

 

 

Ariadne was terribly careful not to alert anyone to her change. She and Arthur decided together that if they were going to do this, and really do this, then they would take every precaution not to be a liability for one another. 

 

 

Two years after Cobb went back home, Arthur got Ariadne to agree to move in with him. She hated the idea of leaving Paris, now that she finally saw it for its true beauty, but in New York, Arthur always denied snoring and was vehemently unashamed that he had a tendency to slide his hand up her shirt while they slept.  
  
She went to New York and fell in love with the beauty and more so with Arthur.

 

 

Two more years later, a move to San Francisco (“Why is the Golden Gate Bridge red?”), finding out that Arthur was a damn good accountant before he became a criminal, and Ariadne over the moon to introduce Arthur to her grandparents, they broke up.  
  
Arthur was lying, Ariadne turned the other cheek too many times, and Arthur just can’t seem to let it go.  
  
“There’s a reason why I left accountancy before, Ari.”  
  
“You came back from your ‘business trip’ with three cracked ribs and a black eye!”  
  
“I can handle those things. I can’t handle being bored.”  
  
“With me?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You’re bored with me. That’s what you’re saying?”  
  
“No! Don’t put words in my mouth.”  
  
“This is our life. If we’re going to do the whole thing, get married and make a family, it’s going to be safely in our home and away from the kind of people Eames’ associates with!”  
  
“Ari…” She was already stomping out of the bedroom.  
  
“You know who you are. You know what you mean to me. Please don’t take that away from me.”  
  
His mind raced for ways to convince her to stay. 

 

 

In the end, she didn’t. She moved back to Paris and he went back to New York. San Francisco had been her dream and Arthur was content to give that to her until he wasn’t anymore. Ariadne couldn’t stay in their house without him and waiting there for him was less of a life than she deserved.

 

 

Arthur read Tennyson a lot while he traveled. It soothed him when he hated all the colors. The blues of the chairs and the beige on the walls, and the red lipstick on the mark; he hated all of it.  
  
Several times over the years he contemplating finding her and begging for her back. But he was afraid that he would make the same mistakes all over again.  
  
The universe was a funny thing, Arthur often mused. He found the most beautiful thing in the world and failed to make a life with her. At his drunkest, Arthur often raged that the love of his life, his soul mate, his fated love, was someone that wanted everything he couldn’t give her; was too scared to give her. 

 

 

He was in Los Angeles when it happened. Seven years later and he still loved the color red because it reminded him of that coat, and of her lips, and the color of her favorite scarf, or those ridiculous panties he ripped in half on his first trip to Napa. He was shopping for a gift for Philippa when he picked up a stuffed bear with a plush heart sewn on its chest. She was much too old for those kinds of things nowadays. He blinked.  
  
When his eyes opened a half second later, the heart was gray-147. Another second later, and his world was gray-200. 

 

 

Another eight years later and Arthur still remembered that taxis in New York were yellow. He recalled that taxis in Paris were mostly black (or gray-200 when he’s being especially bitter). After it happened, he woke in a hospital room because the shopkeeper found him lying on the floor holding the gray-139 bear with the gray-147 heart.  
  
Cobb was sitting on the chair next to his bed, reading a magazine.  
  
“What happened?”  
  
Cobb’s eyes used to be blue. “To you? Or to her?”  
  
“Her, first, then me.”  
  
“Car accident. She was in a taxi in Marseilles when a drunk driver lost control. Her mother said she died on impact, no pain. You lost consciousness, I’m assuming when you reverted back to—, ” Cobb sighed and dropped the magazine on the side table behind him.  
  
“Don’t lose yourself, okay? When I lost it after Mal, I thought I would never see beauty ever again. I’ve got kids, so I was wrong. They didn’t bring back the color though. But you move on. You breathe slowly, and you move on, and when breathing gets too hard, you picture the color of her hair in the sun or the way her eyes looked when she’d stare at you. Let that be your reason for living. Live to remember. It’s better to have known about it, and lost it, then to go your whole life without.”  
  
“What if I can't?”  
  
“You can. She loved you for a reason. It wasn’t because you’re the type to give up.”  
  
“I gave up on her.”  
  
Cobb sighed and sat back. “Yeah, you did. But she gave up, too. So you’re both idiots. But this is life, Arthur; we don’t always get the best ending. She asked about you every so often. Wanted to make sure you were safe. So be safe. She might not be around to ask after you, but you owe it to her to be safe. You hear me?”  
  
Arthur was quiet. He stopped looking at Cobb when seeing gray-56 instead of light blue was too excruciating. He nodded, though.  
  
“What am I supposed to be, if not here for her?”  
  
“Still be here for her. Be here to remember her and know that she existed, the same way you’ll continue to exist for her.”

 

 

Eight years after seeing the world go gray again, Arthur was back in San Francisco. He overpaid the current owners to get their house back, but he felt better in that house than in any other place in the world. Here, he lived with her. Here, he loved her. Here, she was his.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Haven't written a fic in years. Hope this wasn't crap. Refer to my tumblr annamegatron.tumblr.com for how many times I reblogged that post about this AU. Also, I'm not Chris Nolan and whipped this up for free.


End file.
